(NBC News) July 7, 2020 - New recommendations for lung cancer screening would nearly double the number of Americans eligible for the test, according to guidelines released Tuesday by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. The draft guidelines propose lowering the eligibility age for lung cancer screening to 50 from 55, and lowering the number of years a person smoked an average of a pack a day (known as “pack years”) to 20 from 30 to qualify for the test.

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H. Jack West, MD (Posted: July 08, 2020)

The benefit of low dose chest CT screening for lung cancer remains somewhat controversial, but this liberalization would allow better detection of patients with lung cancer who fall below the radar for current screening.

(Jazz) June 15, 2020 - Jazz Pharmaceuticals plc today announced along with its partner PharmaMar that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Zepzelca™ (lurbinectedin) for the treatment of adult patients with metastatic small cell lung cancer (SCLC) with disease progression on or after platinum-based chemotherapy. Zepzelca was approved under accelerated approval based on overall response rate (ORR) and duration of response. Continued approval for this indication may be contingent upon verification and description of clinical benefit in a confirmatory trial.

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H. Jack West, MD (Posted: June 16, 2020)

We await phase 3 data, but many will welcome a new option with an approximately 35% response rate in phase 2 work to this point. Relapsed small cell lung cancer is a clinical setting in which the FDA-approved standard of care, topotecan, is not widely embraced, due to its significant hematologic toxicity and requirement for 5 days of IV therapy each cycle. The cost of lurbinectedin should lead oncologists to expect to be impressed by phase III data, and many may wait for more data before prescribing it. There is also rather low awareness of lurbinectedin in the broad oncology community and even limited awareness among many thoracic oncologists.

(UCCC/Colorado Cancer Blogs) June 4, 2020 - The international First-line Radiosurgery for Small-Cell Lung Cancer (FIRE-SCLC) analysis led by University of Colorado Cancer Center researchers and published today in JAMA Oncology details clinical outcomes for 710 patients with brain metastases from small cell lung cancer treated with first-line stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS), without prior treatment with whole-brain radiation (WBRT) or prophylactic cranial irradiation (PCI). The study represented a substantial research effort including international collaborators from 28 individual centers and one prospective clinical trial from Asia, North America, and Europe.

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H. Jack West, MD (Posted: June 05, 2020)

This is a provocative retrospective analysis of outcomes for patients who received stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) for brain metastasis in the setting of small cell lung cancer compared to whole brain radiation therapy (WBRT), demonstrating numerically superior results with SRS — not statistically significant and potentially explained by selection biases in a retrospective study — but clearly not worse with SRS compared to WBRT. Considering the toxicity concerns with WBRT, I definitely consider SRS to be a very viable option to consider and arguably favor in patients with a limited number of brain metastases from SCLC.